Putting Your Time Where Your Priorities Are

We are what we pay attention to, and attention is all there is. You`re only as good as your daily appointment calendar.

Do you want to find out the strategic thrust at WalMart, PepsiCo, Hewlett-Packard, Milliken & Co., Mrs. Fields` Cookies?

If you do, analyze the calendar of senior managers Debbi Fields, Sam Walton at WalMart or Andrew Pearson at PepsiCo. They wear their values and visions on their sleeves. They put their calendars where other people put their mouths.

Visions and values that mark the great companies are seldom brilliant. They`re merely sensible. But the leaders live their visions with obsession, drama and constant visibility. If the cornerstone of your business is customer service, you have to spend time on service visibly--at every site, in every department, every day.

Sam Walton lives his priorities; the store is king. Walton, age 66, visits a dozen stores a week, each of the 700 stores in the WalMart chain at least once a year. Willard Marriott Sr., has read every complaint card in the Marriott Hotels system, daily, for 56 consecutive years. His patently obvious strategy is superior service.

Roger Milliken at Milliken & Co., the textile powerhouse, has devoted the last two years to focusing on enhancing customer listening. He and his president, Tom Malone, spend 80 percent of their time at it! They were questioned recently about the diversion of top-level energy by an executive from another company. The response from Malone was simple: ``Our managers are minding the store. How can we not spend 80 percent of our time on our customers if this is our real priority?``

Milliken also has a formal customer listening program that involves customer visits to the company`s facilities. In the visits, customers are given a prescribed period of time to chide Milliken--without interruption

--about anything the company has done, large or small, to irritate them.

So I get unduly rude when managers say they`re too busy to listen to customers. My comment is, ``If superior customer service is your true top priority--single store owner or Fortune 500 CEO--and you`re not spending 50 percent of your time on it, by detailed calendar content evaluation, then it is not your true strategic priority.``

Yes, I know you`re busy. We`re all busy. Every manager, first-line or chairman of a $50 billion company, has 125 or 1,250 legitimate priorities. The magic of Fields, Walton, Marriott and Milliken is that each has radically simplified a complex world. Each has achieved distinction by making the time to pay attention.

It won`t be easy for you. Moreover, the only way to start is to start

--now. I know the meetings, appointments and visits on your calendar have not been scheduled frivolously. Each makes sense, just as the 125 or more priorities make sense.

A friend has a trick. He looks at his meticulously kept ``to-do`` list, and when he needs time to work on a priority, he simply marks a dozen things off the list and frees up 20 percent of his time. (He practiced quite a while to get to that point, I must add.)

I played a game with a colleague one time. He was trying to find 25 percent more time to spend on saving his customers. We looked at his calendar. Twenty-nine meetings were scheduled in the next three weeks. I said, ``I`ve got the answer. Let`s cut back to 17.`` ``Why 17?`` he appropriately asked.

``Well,`` I said, ``the 29 didn`t particularly make sense. It could have been 23 or 34; surely there is no magic to the number 29. Therefore, using the same logic, or lack of logic, 17 couldn`t make any less sense. And 17 is an odd number; it has a ring of preciseness. It sounds as if you thought about it.``

He didn`t quite make it. He cut back to 21. Nonetheless, that was a full 30 percent reduction from where he`d been, and he spent that time calling on customers.

Your challenge is clear. In the next three hours after reading these words, you must go to your calendar and find a way to free up 10 percent of your time. Visibly focus your new-found hours on that priority you keep preaching about, but not living.